1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing device which can exclude images which do not favorably pick up images of the surface of a living mucosa and an image processing method in the image processing device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Observation using image pickup equipment such as X-ray, CT, MRI, ultrasonic observing device, endoscope device and the like has been widely used in the medical field. In such image pickup equipment, the endoscope device, for example, has an elongated insertion portion to be inserted into a body cavity as a living body and has such action and configuration that an image of the inside of the body cavity formed by an objective optical system arranged at a tip end portion of the insertion portion is picked up by an image pickup portion such as a solid-state image sensing device and outputted as an image pickup signal, and the image of the inside of the body cavity is displayed on a display portion such as a monitor based on the image pickup signal. A user observes organs or the like in the body cavity, for example, based on the image of the inside of the body cavity displayed on the display portion such as a monitor. Also, the endoscope device is capable of directly picking up an image of a mucosa of a digestive duct. Therefore, the user can make various observations of color tones of a mucosa, shape of a lesion, fine structure of the surface of a mucosa and so on in a comprehensive manner.
As image pickup equipment for which substantially the same usability as that of the above endoscope device is expected, a capsule-type endoscope device, for example, is proposed. In general, the capsule-type endoscope device comprises a capsule-type endoscope which is arranged in a body cavity by being swallowed by a subject from the mouth and sends a picked-up image of the inside of the body cavity to the outside as an image pickup signal, a receiver for receiving the sent image pickup signal and then, accumulating the received image pickup signals, and an observing device for observing an image of the inside of the body cavity based on the image pickup signal accumulated in the receiver.
Since the capsule-type endoscope constituting the capsule-type endoscope device is advanced by peristalsis of a digestive duct, it generally takes some hours from input into the body cavity through the mouth to ejection from an anus. And since the capsule-type endoscope keeps on outputting an image pickup signal to the receiver during the period from placement in the body cavity to ejection, the number of still images as frame images accumulated in the receiver in moving images for some hours, for example, can be enormous. Thus, in view of more efficient observation by the user, such a proposal is in demand that an image data volume is reduced by processing not to display or store images other than the predetermined images after an image processing method of detecting a predetermined image including a lesion portion such as a bleeding portion is carried out.
The above image processing methods include PCT International Publication No. WO02/073507, for example.